Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

[ER59]

I could not find a more appropriate thread, so I am posting it here.fficeffice" />
We have a ffice:smarttags" />Thailand vacation all booked and paid for, and we are supposed to arrive in Bangkok Nov.12,
and then on Nov.14 take a 7 days bus trip up north to Chiang Rai.
It took us a lot of time and effort to plan the trip, and we really want to go, but all the info I can find on the internet, suggests that flood situation is really bad and is getting worse and that we have to cancel.
I hope we have people who lives in Thailand on this forum, and I would like to hear their first-hand assessment of the flood situation there.
Will appreciate any info.

[don]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

Don't overlook the political repercussions. Word is that people are very unhappy with the government's response to the flooding. Don't be in the middle of that one if it heats up.

[jpatter666]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

We have a friend who lives in Bangkok -- we'll ping her and ask.

Bottom line as I understand it now. Bangkok is going to be a mess IMO, but I think you'll be OK. From what I can tell, Chiang Rai (really? not Chiang Mai?) up north the situation isn't nearly as bad. And by the time you get back, hopefully the water will have drained.

Try this site for updates. Looks like central Bangkok (where you will mainly be) is fine.
http://www.cnngo.com/bangkok/life/th...ourists-883113

[ER59]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

Our main concern is getting from Bangkok to Chiang Rai - we have a bus trip, and from what i can understand, the main flooding area extends from Bangkok about 200km north, so most of the roads are closed

[jpatter666]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

Look at some of the tourist related links in the article. It stated yes some roads closed, but the routes are OK. Even the train connection is reestablished.

By the 14th, you'll be fine.

[bill]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

ER59,

If you need to get to Chiang Rai, fly from Suvarnabhumi airport, it’s open.
http://www.thaiairways.com/
http://www.airasia.com/my/en/home.html
http://www2.nokair.com/en-US/index.html
http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/...ng-sent-abroad
Mandatory evacuations in certain areas of Bangkok are now in full force. Migrant workers are going back to the province using train and busses, it’s packed. Flooding is getting worse in many areas and mandatory evacuations are continuing. See articles below.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/loca...on-sluice-gate

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/loca...-to-city-heart

• Published: 3/11/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

Floodwater from the northern outskirts of the capital continues to flow deeper towards the heart of Bangkok while its western side has been widely inundated and will need over a month to drain.

[pksubs]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

flew out of BKK Oct 31, no problems in the airport. The city is not good though, and I would not plan to spend time there.
Floods were clearing in the Ayutthaya area. Having an alternative to the bus trip sounds like a good idea.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

I will be back in Chiang Mai day after tomorrow and will post an update. I cannot imagine that traveling by bus would be resonable. Although passage north may be possilbe, many places may be closed. This flood is not like a typical flood in the US where the water crests and a few days later clean up begins Many areas in central Thailand have been under water for months.

[thunderdownunder]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

How bad is it REALLY- one word - BAD
Chomanee -a local and my partner, tells me this just awaits the locusts to sink the dream.
You have an understanding of what makes up a Vehicle. Well the factories are safe because they are safe (add $) but the suppliers to the main have the unusual state of having their entire electronic controlled machines flooded. 6 weeks + 9 weeks to get back to full production. Hi lux is and cannot be finished. But many more cannot as well. Toyota will try to give up beat report soon but sorry. Add Honda, Mazda Cannon and many majors. it is a flat country but Japan is on its knees. I know It does not translate well. 32% is at a standstill. People cannot get to work Food is hard to find and Japan is trying to boost but cannot fight Mother nature

[don]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

from today's Asia Times . . .

Hell and high water in Thailand
By Simon Roughneen

BANGKOK - With floodwaters now edging closer towards the Thai capital's heavily-sandbagged city center, the economic, political and human costs of the country's worst floods in over five decades are fast rising.

While northern suburbs are now sitting under two-week-old stinking floodwaters, and historic towns such as Ayutthaya and its famous temple ruins flooded for more than month, the recent news focus has been on whether Bangkok's central areas, including the business district, will likewise be inundated. [1]

So far the city center has been spared, though areas just across from the bulging Chao Phraya River have been deluged. Nearly 400 people have died and over two million have been affected by floods that originated in the country's north and are now bearing down on the capital city in route to the Gulf of Thailand.

Areas that officials earlier said would be spared are now slipping under water. Ploy Patcharin Seema, who on Wednesday was wheeling a case of what she described as "all my things" across the Pinklao bridge linking sodden Thonburi district on the west bank of Bangkok with the mostly dry eastern side.


All images by Simon Roughneen

The area is across the river and within walking distance from some of Bangkok's landmark temples and tourist attractions, including the backpacker hub along Khao San road and historic sites like Grand Palace. It is also a mere five kilometers upriver from the city's main business and financial districts, including the Silom Road area.

Perspiring in the late afternoon heat, Ploy pointed back down the bridge toward the flood and in the general direction of her inundated home. "The water is to here," she said, right hand raised to navel level. "It is so dirty now, but we had no choice to stand in it". On her way to stay at a friend's dry house, Ploy said she needs to find accommodation for her mother. "She is still inside at home."

At the water's edge of the Pinklao bridge, which runs about 400 meters upriver from where King Bhumibol Adulyadej rests in the riverside Siriraj Hospital, residents queued to jump on trucks with wheels high enough to traverse kilometers of flooded streets on the west bank area of the city.



The desperation is palpable and widespread with reports of power outages, food shortages and the emergence of water-borne diseases. All day people ferried food and water to homes or jumped on trucks with whatever they could salvage from their inundated homes. Tens of thousands have evacuated to dry parts of the city or left Bangkok altogether.

Poum Charuprakorn, 22, a classical music student at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, managed to save his musical instruments from the floodwaters. His family home in Pra Pinklao Soi 2 is now almost neck-high in week-old floodwater, he said.

"It has been rising every day," Poum said, passing boxes of possessions to his cousin whose car waited on the dry side of the bridge to take him and his siblings to a bus station from where they planned to travel to a temporary refuge at Kanchanaburi province in the west of the country.



Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's government has said that the flood in the western riverside area of Bangkok should recede within 15-20 days, but Poum believes it will last much longer. "I doubt it will be dry for another month," he said.

Amid a confusing and complex emergency, Yingluck's government and Bangkok's opposition-led City Hall have been at odds over flood management, mitigation and messaging since the waters began to threaten the capital. The political stakes are high considering Bangkok accounts for around 40% of national gross domestic product.

Both sides have alternated between pessimistic and optimistic messages, often interspersed with announcements from one side that took issue or contradicted the other. Yingluck at one point said Bangkok would be spared, while Bangkok Governor Sukhumband Paribatra hotly contested that assessment. Flood mitigation has forced difficult political choices, and it appears that in part Bangkok's downtown remains dry because outer poorer areas are all wet.



At Sam Wa canal on the city's northern outskirts, locals protested and eventually forced open with sledge hammers on Monday a section of a sluice gate that had held flood waters in their neighborhood. Yingluck's government agreed to allow for a one meter opening of the gate after residents carped that their area was being sacrificed to prevent floods from moving south toward the city center.

In what some local media interpreted as Yingluck buckling to grass roots resistance, on Wednesday the Bangkok city administration enforced a repair of the breached gate which it claimed if left open would flood industrial estates and central Bangkok commercial areas.

Yingluck was elected in July on a pro-poor policy platform, but critics say many of her flood management choices have favored the rich over the poor. Those charges parallel criticism that Sukhumbhand's City Hall has prioritized saving central areas over relieving the flooded outskirts.

Visiting the area on Tuesday, Asia Times Online encountered a mixture of views on both sides of the canal. People in flooded areas were incensed that they had been "sacrificed" by the government to save Bangkok. Residents south of the gate, meanwhile, were angry at the dangers posed by the temporary forced opening of the sluice gate.

Standing on the bridge overlooking the canal, one resident - an elderly man who refused to give his name - from the area immediately south of the gate said that while he did not want his house to be flooded, he understood that it "is not fair to those living over there if they have to hold the waters around their homes."



For those awaiting or caught up in the floods, mixed messages coming from government and City Hall have prompted anger and confusion. Neeranuch Techasoontorn, who was wading through knee-high, fast-running waters outside her home just off Sukhumvit Road's Soi 50, near the city center's eastern side, is among them.

Water was gushing into her street after three separate cracks opened in the sidewalls of a nearby canal that lead to an important sluice gate at the edge of Sukhumvit Road where many expatriates and wealthy Thais reside.

The breach was repaired earlier this week but the cracks highlight the possibility that Bangkok's estimated 2,000 canals and subterranean waterways will be overwhelmed to pass billions of cubic meters of slow-moving and part-barricaded floodwater to the north as it is channeled through the city to the Gulf of Thailand.

Damage has also been done to the government's credibility. "I use social networking to keep up with what is going on," said Neeranuch, a graphic designer, amid reports that the number of Twitter users has increased by 20% since the onset of the flood crisis. "I don't think any of the authorities have done a good job telling us what is happening."



To others, however, the instant messaging and real-time updates disseminated through social networking tools have likewise failed to provide clarity.

"People are spreading rumor all the time, by phone and social network," said Chutimas Suksai, an anthropology student and volunteer relief worker. "I was checking my iPhone at Ari [a station on Bangkok's elevated Skytrain system] yesterday and people were tweeting that it was flooded, that sewers had burst. But I was standing there [and] it was dry."

Note
1. Click here for a Google map (Thai language) with regular updates of flooded and non-flooded areas of Bangkok, including local photographs.

Simon Roughneen is a foreign correspondent. His website is www.simonroughneen.com.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

This just in from a friend who flew from Bangkok to Chiang Rai yesterday.

"On the plane back today sat by a window and couldn't believe the flooding - true one reads about it and sees pics on TV but to actually see it from the air makes one realize what a disaster this really has become. It was like flying over the gulf, yet a road would pop out for a few miles and then disappear again. The water is just not moving, nor anything else. Sickening how much politics and back biting is beginning to surface when so many still need help and more will be needing it soon."

[ER59]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

Thanks every one for the replies.
As of now, we are still willing to take our chances and go, unless.. the situation will get significantly worse between now and Nov.10.
Any updates from locals will be greatly appreciated.fficeffice" />

[don]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

Thai Investment Note:

Floods drown hi-tech plants
By Martin J Young

HUA HIN, Thailand - Devastating flooding in Thailand, the world's number two exporter of hard disk drives (HDD) after China, will have a major impact on production which is likely to affect the netbook and PC industries and drive up prices globally.

Overall market shortage will reach up to 28% in the next six months, due to flooded factories in Thailand, industry research firms iSupply and IDC predict. The country provides 40% of the international hard drive supply.

Western Digital, the largest producer of hard drives, is expected to be hit the hardest, with up to 75% of its production shut down. Seagate, which also has factories in Thailand, has said these are still operational but will see a significant drop in production due to difficulties in obtaining parts. Toshiba has reported that water is 2 meters deep in its storage device plant and 3 meters deep in its semi-conductor factory in Thailand.

Hard disk manufacturers have already increased their prices by up to 50% in some instances, and local vendors are seeing supplies run dry as lingering inventories are quickly snapped up. IDC research analysts commented "We generally believe the HDD industry will find way to return to pre-flood production levels by March, but by that point HDD supplies will be at extremely low levels. It's still going to be a pretty painful period from December through February for most HDD customers."

PC manufacturer Asus said it would run out of hard disks this month. Other major computer companies such as Lenovo and Apple have confirmed that the hard drive drought and consequent price hikes will continue well into next year.

Camera manufacturers based in Thailand such as Sony, Canon and Nikon have also been hit by the floods and have predicted a drop in shipments until the end of the first quarter next year.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_.../MK05Dj01.html

[ER59]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

I will be back in Chiang Mai day after tomorrow and will post an update. I cannot imagine that traveling by bus would be resonable. Although passage north may be possilbe, many places may be closed. This flood is not like a typical flood in the US where the water crests and a few days later clean up begins Many areas in central Thailand have been under water for months.

Thailandnotes,
We are flying to Bangkok day after tomorrow - any last minute update or advice?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Thailand Flloods - how bad is it really?

As of today, it seems routes north from Bangkok to Sukothai are flooded.

http://maps.google.co.th/maps/ms?msi...43813,8.811035

Zoom in slightly to see blue flooded area.

I doubt you can take the bus trip you described in your initial post. I would hope you can improvise once you get here.

It’s difficult to get accurate train info unless you go to the train station.

One good thing about Thailand is there are lots of cheap flights which you can almost always book spur of the moment. To fly from Bangkok to Chiang Mai costs 50 to 100 dollars. Bangkok Airways operates a number of small airports throughout the country, and I would think you could escape to the north or south or east and then travel by car or bus.

I sent you a message with my email. I doubt I can be of further assistance, but if you have questions fire away.